Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of language. People who study language are called linguists.

There are five main parts of linguistics: the study of sounds (phonology), the study of parts of words, like "un-" and "-ing" (morphology), the study of word order and how sentences are made (syntax), the study of the meaning of words (semantics), and the study of the unspoken meaning of speech that is separate from the literal meaning of what is said (for example, saying "I'm cold" to get someone to turn off the fan (pragmatics).

There are many ways to use linguistics every day. Some linguists are theoretical linguists and study the theory and ideas behind language, such as historical linguistics (the study of the history of language, and how it has changed), or the study of how different groups of people may use language differently (sociolinguistics). Some linguists are applied linguists and use linguistics to do things. For example, forensic linguistics is used in crime investigations, and computational linguistics is used to help make computers understand languages, as in speech recognition.